


but at least the pain will last

by TurtleTotem



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Post-Battle of Bright Moon (She-Ra), Season 2, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26097961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/pseuds/TurtleTotem
Summary: Catra's soulmark is a bruise. Of course even this, for her, would manifest as damage.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 239





	but at least the pain will last

**Author's Note:**

> Set mid-season 2 because that’s as far as I’ve gotten, and no I couldn’t wait until I finished the series to write fic, that’s how desperately I ship it. Title from Trading Yesterday’s “Love Song Requiem” because I’m sappy like that. On tumblr [here](https://turtletotem.tumblr.com/post/627276664673550336/but-at-least-the-pain-will-last).

Even in the Horde, everyone knows your soulmark comes in on your 18th birthday. Sometimes it’s a name, or a symbol, or half of a symbol, or something else even more metaphorical. Sometimes soulmates match, or complete each other’s marks; other times the marked simply recognize (sooner or later) who the mark is referring to. Many soulmarks are obvious. Others are bafflingly hard to decipher.

Catra’s soulmark is a bruise.

Of course it is, she thinks as she watches the darkness bloom across her skin, like ink in water. Of course even this, for her, would manifest as damage.

It’s not just any bruise, of course. She recognizes it before it’s even finished forming. The real bruise healed months ago, though it took a long time. She’d had weeks with it, pressing against the perfect blue-purple handprint until it ached. This one aches, too; she didn’t know soulmarks could do that. But it figures that hers would.

Adora didn’t mean to hurt her, when she left that bruise. She was saving Catra’s life, actually—for the second time in as many minutes, as they tumbled down the sheer side of Frosta’s ice palace. It was hardly Adora’s fault that jerking Catra’s full body weight to a stop like that was bound to leave a mark. But that mark was the only one Catra had gotten that whole fight, that whole day. It doesn’t matter what Adora’s _trying_ to do, it always ends with her hurting Catra.

It’s not like this changes anything, Catra tells herself. It doesn’t even tell her anything she didn’t already know.

The next day she gets a new pair of gloves that covers her wrists.

Weeks later, Scorpia sees a stray file and realizes Catra’s 18th birthday has passed. When she excitedly asks about her soulmark, Catra puts a knife to her throat and hisses. No one asks again.

***

By the end of the day, on her 18th birthday, Adora still can’t find a mark. She stands mostly naked in her ridiculously palatial room at Bright Moon, looking down her arms, her legs, her torso, twisting to try and see her back, checking the bottoms of her feet, even peeking inside her underwear. Nothing.

Does this mean today isn’t her actual birthday? It’s not as if Shadow Weaver could really know. It could just be the wrong day. It doesn’t have to mean that she’s unmarked. That she doesn’t have a soulmate at all.

“Adora?” Glimmer bustles through her door without knocking, carrying a tray. “Do you want the last piece of your cake? I had to fight Bow for it—Adora!” She almost drops the tray. “What happened to your face?”

“My face?” Adora rushes to the mirror on the opposite wall.

Claw marks, on her cheekbone. Dark brown, like long-healed scars, but they sting when she touches them. Like the original scratches had, for weeks; she kept touching them, even though it was probably the reason they healed so slowly and kept trying to get infected. They finally disappeared, months ago, despite Glimmer’s worry that they would scar. Oh, the irony.

They’re back for good, now. And it still hurts to touch them—is that normal, for a soulmark?—and Adora still does it anyway.

The original scratches were a petty injury, neither as painful nor as weirdly symbolic as the long scores, like Horde insignia wings, that Catra had left down her back in the same fight. But the claws to her face were the ones Catra had done, not as part of the fight, but purely out of spite and temper and with a peculiar sense of _claiming._ This was the injury that had dripped blood into the water while Catra gloated about Adora being too weak to save her new friends, the one injury that everyone could _see_ while it healed.

“Oh, Adora… I’m so sorry.” Glimmer’s voice is hushed, her eyes wide with horror. She knows who this mark refers to as surely as Adora does.

“Don’t be sorry,” Adora says, belatedly noticing the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m not.”

“You’re not?” Glimmer repeats, disbelieving.

“I’m not,” Adora says again, and even though her soulmark aches as she wipes the tears off her cheeks, it’s true. Even though it hurts, she wouldn’t trade it for anything.

***

_(One day, they will make the discovery that a painful soulmark can stop hurting—healed by the right touch from the right person. That day is far in the future, but when it comes, it’s worth it. It’s all worth it.)_


End file.
